Javelin by Sufjan Stevens
this is my album review turned diary entry
The colder days are closing in and I feel that there really is no choice but to reassess every muscle, twitch and thought; all the dust behind the bookcase. It’s November and I’m wearing hoodies, pants, slippers. I recall simple ideas such as that every time I go outside, I get to, at some point, come back in again. I’m so lucky to have that, I cherish it.
I’m having a very easy time being bored. I don’t care as much to make bashful efforts or buy into the myth that I always need to improve myself. I would rather just sit down on the couch.
I have this goal in my life to make more room. I want deeper breaths, longer walks, bigger books. That’s kind of why I’m writing today. I want my attention back. I want depth. I don’t want to keep losing my focus, I want to preserve it more than anything.
I haven’t written anything long form or public lately so I wanted to break that streak to celebrate one of my favourite artists in the world: Sufjan Stevens. The beloved singer/songwriter has returned with an album that I find so exceptional and so perfect that I can't help but say something. If you haven't listened, go enjoy it and come back to read more if you'd like.
Sufjan Stevens
I’ve been a fan of Sufjan since around 2017, when I first heard his stuff in Call Me By Your Name, later discovering classics like Carrie & Lowell, The Age of Adz, and Illinois.
Recently Sufjan announced that he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome and he’s temporarily lost his ability to walk. While this rare autoimmune disease is recoverable, but to get back on his feet he will have to undergo intensive physical therapy, for months.
On top of this, Sufjan also announced that he was dedicating the album to his late partner, Evan Richardson, who passed away in April. This was a shocking piece of news to fans. Sufjan almost always keeps his private life actually private, in fact I don’t believe he’s revealed his sexuality to fans until now. I was sorry to hear about it. Sufjan wrote this about his partner on Instagram:
“He was an absolute gem of a person, full of life, love, laughter, curiosity, integrity, and joy. He was one of those rare and beautiful ones you find only once in a lifetime—precious, impeccable, and absolutely exceptional in every way.”
Thinking of Evan Richardson’s qualities and the profound impact of his passing reshaped the way I listened to this album. I know the art is supposed to be the art, but I couldn’t ignore the added context and it became something more visceral, sad, and impactful. It’s safe to say the album has an emotional density both in and outside of it’s parameters. Here’s what I think of it:
Javelin is mysterious and unbridled, it shows Sufjan returning to a familiar groove of his awesome folk songs— songs that are unafraid to evolve with more lavish instrumentations and amazingly potent lyrics.
I love it. I love the album. I love the songwriting. The surreal narratives shown here are so full of love and confession; yearning and pain, that I cannot help but be moved by the record and everything it offers. To me this is both music and poetry on a mountaintop. Sufjan really is a gifted songwriter who continues to deliver. His music comes out at times as impossibly intimate, lonely, and introspective, and at others bright, bold, symphonic jams full of voice and gospel. Javelin is one of my favourite listens of this year and I’m sure it will stay with me for a long time.
Goodbye Evergreen
Here Sufjan says goodbye to something that should last forever. It’s a powerful opener which sets the theme of the album rather bluntly. The song comes with a great display of flowery vocals, choir-like harmonies, and intricately woven electronic moments. It touches base on things from Sufjan we’ve heard before, while still providing unexpected sounds. As always, it’s a beautifully written track.
The narrator here is asking to be released; asking to be let go from the pain, the “poison,” as he puts it. The imagery of someone withering away is almost too much to bear, and not even just as empathy for the narrator, Sufjan, and his late partner, which is incredibly, profoundly tragic, but as a listener here, I’m having a hard time with this one because I don’t want anyone I love myself to die.
Nonetheless, I think the narrator and the subject find peace in the silver lining that, the subject gets to be free from their pain. Towards the end, a wide range of instrumentation comes to life, almost in the role of a resurrector. With roaring, industrial sounds, drills and bells, machinery in an echo chamber. A woman’s voice joins the chorus in an angelic way. I love the change to a more major-key-driven melody during this part. The chorus repeats “you know I love you,” over, and over, eventually fading out and closing to hopefully resolve the death, or find solace in any way, as best as we can.
In a way I think Sufjan is realizing here, is that it’s he who has to leave the evergreen, and not the other way around. When a person passes, our memories of them cease to develop. When someone dies a piece of us goes with them, as if we’re dying a little bit too. It hurts too much.
A Running Start
Ok. Shifting here somewhat, Sufjan takes us back to the beginning of a very raw romance full of hope and shyness. Cutie as hell: Familiar guitar picking, hushed vocals, the song reacts back to something very juvenile and touching; the first love. The images are so clear: “the silver moon, the water snake, a pair of eyes, a gentle breeze.” I feel like I’ve been to this place before in a past life (I’m sorry).
This song holds both the nervousness and unforgettable memories we experience in falling for someone, and honestly, it’s painfully relatable. The song is nostalgic, light, airy, and warm— like a camping trip.
Will Anybody Ever Love Me?
I don’t think I can put this one into words. This is too much. It’s been stuck in my head since it came out as a single. It’s a cryer. It’s clearly a song about struggle, pain, and sacrifice, but it’s also calling out to God for redemption. There are a lot of religious attitudes present in this track, with the image of the burning stake, and my favourite line:
“Wash away the summer sins I made”
It’s such a sincere and sad thing to say. The vocals are beautiful. In the writing there’s a sense of nature, which I think is still our greatest instrument for being lonely and purifying ourselves.
Another component I really want to address, forgive the tangent, is the part about not being used “for sport.” I think this is really important, as a lot of this generation is obsessed with aesthetics and appearances, building personalities on images. I think it’s possible to prioritize aesthetics in a partner before we prioritize our partners for themselves. Our partners shouldn’t be our ornaments or accessories.
This one is my favourite song on the album. I really love this one and I don’t care. Sincerity is rare and it must be protected. Will anybody ever love me? I feel like I’ve been hearing the shadow of this question since I was 2 years old. Anyway
Everything That Rises
This review is taking me a long time because I don’t know how to write anymore, and I want to go outside.
Everything That Rises is a heartfelt ballad I can’t fully put my finger on. What is the salted sphere? This track features an interesting vocal and vibrato, and a really beautiful set of harmonies. It’s slow but steady. My favourite lyric from this one is: “Cast me not in hell, where the demons rage.” Reminds me of when I read Dante’s Inferno this summer.
The song has a weightlessness to it, a sense of levitation. The idea that everything rises must converge is interesting. I haven’t thought of that before. Maybe Sufjan is realizing that everyone who dies and goes to Heaven comes together harmoniously. When the weight of the material world is lifted, the whole universe finally opens up and guides us to infinity.
Genuflecting Ghost
I had to look this word up. To genuflect is to “lower one's body briefly by bending one knee to the ground, typically in worship or as a sign of respect.” I don’t know a lot about worship, but something about becoming so infatuated with an idol that you submit yourself to them totally is kind of beautiful. I just think believing in something is a positive quality, so long as it doesn’t involve anything harmful or destructive to people. When we’re in worship, are we thinking less of ourselves? This is the goal, isn’t it?
Sufjan’s Genuflecting Ghost further opens the door to the church, I picture both silent prayers and perhaps a solemn wedding. The musical structure is very traditional and hymn-like, steadily relying on a guitar chord progression, but bursting with the choir, and some really bright, beautiful chimes panned widely. Not my favourite song to be honest, sorry :(
My Little Red Fox
Driven by warm piano arpeggios, and whispered vocal layers, our narrator asks to be “kissed within, kiss me like the wind.” He’s asking for something eternal. People touch us, change us. You know that. I believe those changes never leave, whatever the form they take, agreeable or not.
The arrangements of the songs really work with me, starting slow and ending high. The different sections and continuously evolving instrument selection help my ADHD for sure. This song reminded me of an overnight hike I once did by myself when I was a little bit troubled in my life. I won’t detail the picture but I can say I walked home feeling fresh and deeply thankful for Mother Earth.
So You Are Tired
Yes, I am. Each morning I wake up sleepy, but get a blast of energy from a shot of espresso that comes roaring out of my Breville coffee machine. I don’t clean it as much as I should. I have a very steady level of alertness and concentration that lasts until 2 or 4pm when I crash. I saw somewhere that this means I have low blood sugar, and I believed that because I do. My doctor said so.
This song is about the rough patch in a relationship, and rather than any sense of anger or pain I pick up from this something that is much more bleak. Almost like the narrator’s expectations are finally being realized. I always have found that a lack of feeling hurts more than anything else. It’s like a departure from being human. So You Are Tired possesses some of the best harmony work on the whole album. It’s like Christmas. The background singers are truly incredible.
As I get older, I think of fatigue less as physiological and more as psychological. Maybe I’m tired in the morning because I haven’t fully figured out my purpose in life.
Javelin (To Have and To Hold)
The title track Javelin is a short, somber intrusive thought sung out loud. This song actually reminded me of White Winter Hymnal by the Fleet Foxes. Each one produces the imagery of blood falling on snow. Albeit Sufjan here is much more stark, literally saying:“There’d be blood in the place where you stood,” while the Fleet Foxes allude to blood more carefully, with red scarves and strawberries.
I didn’t love this song at first, but it’s grown on me, and when I think about the larger picture of this album, the songs add a depth I previously wouldn’t have expected. While the album Javelin/Sufjan’s life is tender and tragic right now, Javelin (To Have and To Hold) is the after-regret of a murder or at least the imagination’s pure idea of committing one. It’s like shadow work. When you verbalize your darkest stuff you can see how cold your breath is.
I have to commend Sufjan for the raw, scary, beauty in this song here. “My eyes travelling to the spot where you’d thrown yourself over the rocks,” I hear a spine crunch while the waves roar. Jeepers.
Shit Talk
Shit Talk is an 8-minute epic, a folk song— a crescendo. It ends with a gorgeous soundscape conclusion that sunsets the album wonderfully. I think this is the Mt. Olympus of the project, in my opinion. Shit Talk is hard, it’s heavy, it’s despair: “In the future there will be a terrible cost for that was left undone.” Its instrumentation is occasionally stripped down, with standard folk arrangements, but, like many tracks on this LP, it’s constantly evolving.
One of my favourite lyrics here is “Did I fail to believe in positive thoughts?” The narrator is admitting he isn’t right for this person. He isn’t the one. The song goes on to find this climactic chorus driven by the refrain “No, I don’t wanna fight at all.”
This song is filled with simple and unforgettable melodies. Sufjan delivers these with an interesting, almost surprising vibrato that adds another layer of captivation. As I mentioned before the song is on a constant transformer. It gives me an impression that the narrator has thought long and hard about this fight, and this relationship in its totality.
“I will always love you but I cannot live with you,” is such a sad lyric. It makes me feel like walking home alone. However Sufjan drops the latter clause in the song’s second half, so it reads simply “I will always love you.” Amazing. It’s much harder to remember that part. I will always love you is the point. It’s not your fault. Listen to this with headphones.
There’s A World
With this surprising cover Sufjan nods to one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all time, Neil Young. The song is ghostlike, and it comes with a huge amount of creative confidence, appropriately. With a merrier melody and chord progression than Neil, Sufjan’s rendition adds whimsy and an uplifting spirit. With a little extra reverb gracing the vocals on this track I imagine the wind and mountains I dreamed of as a child. We are the interception of things that will never cross again, completely rare and unique. However, I think what Neil was conveying is that while we are all individual, what we have in common is the interception. The collisions, the ties and connections we make, they are metaphysically validating.
This short closing ballad of the album is respectfully simple and spiritually grand. I listened to this album without looking, but while this song played I knew it was over. Ah, it always seems to end in tears. Thanks for reading. I swear it’s the best music that makes you feel like yourself again. Until next time,
—Will